In the continuously evolving Information Technology industry, a huge challenge facing consumers of IT related products and solutions is the ongoing operation and maintenance of their technology investments. Network issues can be predicted sooner if the clients are more proactive in maintaining their equipment. But with continuous time-sensitive critical demands on IT staff combined with the complexity of optimally operating today’s IT environments, it’s not uncommon for organizations to deploy technology, and once deployed to the level of acceptance, be left unattended until a malfunction occurs; a malfunction that could have been easily avoided with proper equipment maintenance.

“Infrastructure solutions tend to degrade in performance and reliability over time, and customers do not have the resources nor the inclination to do proactive maintenance, resulting in declining IT Efficiencies. To address this phenomenon in the mid-market enterprise we have developed StarWATCH, a professional services solution designed to assist organizations in maximizing network uptime and optimizing application performance” says Steve Marks, President and CEO of Starnet Data Design.

Starnet helps mid-market enterprises, educational institutions and government entities maximize their investments in Information Technology solutions, by designing, installing and maintaining high-performance, scalable and stable networks on which to run their business. The company works with selected technologies that they feel deliver strong value propositions and those that they can support to a high degree, like Juniper. “We are constantly reviewing emerging technologies and seek to identify those we believe can help our customers once they become mature and stable. We work to become highly familiar with these technologies early in their life cycle, and to be ready to design and deploy them once we feel the solution is mature and the customer is ready for its production use.

Starnet’s IT solutions are delivered supported by a high-touch service model and unique service offerings. StarWATCH, the company’s flagship IT Efficiency Management service, blends together a number of critical service and support processes all designed to maximize network uptime and optimize application performance. StarWATCH works particularly well with Juniper networking technologies enabling Starnet to support its Juniper customers with a unique and customized service offering that maximizes the reliability and performance of networks built with Juniper products.

“StarWATCH represents a new paradigm in Remote Managed Network Services. Positioned for the mid-market enterprise customer, StarWATCH provides clients a methodology for driving IT environments to 100 percent efficiency. Through 1) network base-lining, 2) strategic metrics monitoring, 3) daily network watching, 4) weekly efficiency reporting, 5) actionable efficiency improvement task management, and 6) critical network device firmware and configuration management, we are applying process and procedure to the areas often neglected in maintaining enterprise networks; the areas most often the reason for networks to slow down or go down. By executing these processes proactively, we prevent most unpredicted outages and degradations of performance”, says Marks.

Under StarWATCH, Starnet takes responsibility for maintaining the health of a customer’s critical core network devices. The company’s engineering team insures that the devices that are critical to the efficiency of the IT environment are maintained in an optimized operating state, including insuring the devices are running the most appropriate versions o f firmware. If upgrades t o t he firmware are dictated, Starnet engineers perform the upgrades as part of StarWATCH.

Recently, Starnet assisted a growing financial services provider in designing a network infrastructure that was highly scalable using Juniper technology and the company has grown drastically ever since the implementation. By implementing the correct core networking infrastructure the client was able to scale up their network without having to endure any major equipment upgrades. The resilient scalable network foundation deployed allowed them to grow significantly without having to change their core network.

Starnet has been serving its customers for 27 years and has maintained its market positioning as a trusted Value Add Solutions Provider through consistent positioning of networking engineering excellence. “Through the years we have always concentrated on delivering a high degree of network engineering expertise. In keeping with that model and with the evolution of the complexity of operating efficient data networks, we developed StarWATCH. We wanted to evolve from being our customer’s break/fix vendor to becoming our customer’s most strategic networking solutions resource. We believe that by delivering a service offering that successfully assists customers in more efficiently operating their businesses by keeping their networks operating at peak efficiency, we can elevate to the status of a customer’s preferred technology partner,” concludes Marks.